


1969 Prime

by Redbyrd



Series: 1969 [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s02e21 1969, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-08
Updated: 2005-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28496085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redbyrd/pseuds/Redbyrd
Summary: In 2010, we saw an example of a possible timeline that was elimated by time-tampering. In 1969, we saw the way the timeline ended as a result of Hammond's note. What might the original timeline for 1969 have looked like?
Series: 1969 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087376
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Have I mentioned that I love AUs? For the terminally anal: The real General Ryan was stationed in Germany in 1996 when I have him making a brief appearance in the story. Obviously there were a few minor differences between the original and canon universes that aren't addressed in the story. :)

DISCLAIMER:  
The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.  
\-------------

Captain Samantha Carter bent over the keyboard, rechecking her calculations for the third time. She hadn't had time to run all the numbers for possible scenarios, but she was fairly sure that gating through the sun would be, in her CO's eloquent verbiage, *bad*. She was conscious of said CO waiting less than patiently on the ramp chatting to Daniel, who had inconsiderately chosen today to be on time.

"Carter?" the colonel yelled up to her impatiently.

She looked up and reached for the microphone, "Almost there, sir. At this time of year, the direct line between P2X-555 and the Earth takes us within seventy thousand miles of the sun. I have to update the computer's drift calculation to include gravitational space-time warping."

She was counting on O'Neill's eyes to glaze over for a minute while he tried to parse that, but he yelled back impatiently after only the barest pause. "We know that! Let's go."

"Yes, sir," She decided that the calulation was as good as it was going to get and told the technician to start dialing P2X-555.

As the circle started to spin, General Hammond entered the control room and raised an eyebrow, "Shouldn't you be with your team, Captain?"

Sam didn't bother to explain, just said, "Yes, sir. On my way," and plunged down the stairs. She didn't see Sergeant Siler until the last possible moment. "Oof!"

Siler had just enough time to brace himself, so instead of knocking them both down the steps, Sam cannoned into him and bounced. He reached out to steady her, "Are you all right, Captain?"

"Fine," she snapped, restraining the urge to rub the spot where she'd bruised her hip on his tool belt. "Excuse me, I've got to--"

Siler turned to let her pass, and instead of stepping by, Sam found herself rotating with him, her pocket hooked on the handle of the pliers sticking out of the tool belt. She nearly fell again, and heard a distinct 'riiip' from her pocket as she pulled free. She heard the technician announcing the fifth chevron.

"Carter?!" her CO's familiar bellow come out. "Sometime before we all die of old age would be good." Carter knew that he'd been a little touchy all week, ever since the Tok'ra had taken the Reetu boy, but it was getting a little old.

"Oh, he's in a good mood," she muttered. She ignored Siler's muttered apology and leaped to the bottom of the stairs. "Coming, sir!" She yelled back as she checked her pants. The pocket was torn, but not indecent. She rummaged through her pack to be sure that the tiny sewing/repair kit was there, then yanked it out and stuffed it into her jacket pocket and pulled the jacket low enough to conceal the damage, gritting her teeth as she jarred the stitches in her right hand. She swung the pack back on as the wormhole opened.

O'Neill said, "Ah! Done already?"

Sam muttered something noncommital, then allowed herself a small glare at his back as she pulled on her hat and she and Teal'c followed him up the ramp. _'Serve him right if he gets to P2X-555 and our heads are on backwards,'_ she thought childishly. She felt the familiar chill and rush of the wormhole, and stepped out into- the Gate room. What? This wasn't the tiny stone dias surrounded by trees that the MALP had showed on P2X-555. For a split second she wondered if they were coming back and she'd just blanked on the whole mission. She followed O'Neill down the ramp, looking around. The room seemed strangely empty and there was no one in the control room. Colonel O'Neill turned around and yelled, "Whoa!" The wormhole shut off and evaporated into mist- taking the stargate with it. Sam's mouth fell open. That was impossible.

"Did you see that?" O'Neill asked, just as the walls started to waver. They seemed to ripple, then the familiar Gate room melted away to reveal a different space, smaller, dingier, older. Only Sam's teammates seemed unaffected, standing in the center of the room looking bewildered.

"Uh, Jack, do you see this?" Sam looked to see Daniel pointing upward. Over them there were what looked like the nozzles of rocket engines, attached to some larger construction that vanished upward into the darkness.

"Captain Carter, where are we?" O'Neill asked.

Sam suppressed the urge to say, _'Sorry sir, I have no idea. I just got here myself.'_ If she wasn't careful, her CO's flippancy was going to rub off on her. "I don't know, sir. For a minute there, we were back in the Gate room." There was something naggingly familiar about this place, but Sam couldn't put her finger on it.

O'Neill walked to one side of the room, trying to get a better look up and said, "You know, this looks suspiciously like the butt end of a Titan missile."

An intercom blared and Sam jumped. "Standing by for test burn in T-minus 20 seconds." Sam's eyes widened and she exchanged an alarmed look with Daniel and the colonel. They could hear the whine of something starting up.

Teal'c gave the three of them a puzzled look. "What is a 'test burn?' " he asked.

"Just what it sounds like," O'Neill shot back as he and Sam hastily vacated the area under the engines. Not that that was going to help them. They appeared to be in the bottom of a missile silo, and it would immediately fill up with superheated gases and flame as soon as the engine fired. "Any ideas here?" O'Neill demanded as he ran to the bay door and started pounding and yelling "Abort!"

Sam looked desperately for a door control or intercom, while Daniel ran to check the doors on the other side of the room. Teal'c was still on the launch pad, but Sam didn't try to get him to move. They were all toast if they didn't get out of here. The intercom announced, "Fifteen seconds."

O'Neill was pounding on a control box, still yelling for them to abort. The intercom squawked again. "Standing by for ignition." Sam went to see if there was anything on O'Neill's panel that they could affect. Anything that could alert the control room that there were people down here.

The intercom had reached the final countdown. At five seconds, Carter and O'Neill flattened against the wall in the vain hope that their clothes and packs would shield them from the fire to come. There was steam drifting down and they could hear the engines begin to hiss. At three seconds, they heard the zing of a zatnickatel behind them. The intercom finished the countdown, "Two... one... Ignition."

There was complete silence. Sam turned around to see Teal'c standing below the missile with his zat still pointed upward. Daniel was cautiously lifting his head across the room, then he got to his feet and joined them. They all three stared at Teal'c. O'Neill asked, "How'd you know that would work?"

Teal'c replied with his usual superb calm, "I did not."

The bay doors behind O'Neill slid open and three soldiers ran into the room pointing guns at them. _'Just like home,'_ Sam thought in confusion. Even the uniforms looked familiar. Her father had worn something very like them when she was a child. She suddenly realized why this place was naggingly familiar and gulped. But that would mean-- this was crazy-- if it was true--

"Hands on your heads! Get on your knees!" the soldier screamed at them and SG-1 obeyed. Sam tried to think through the implications of her theory through a haze of disbelief.

The sergeant's chevrons were still quite recognizable. "Who are you and how did you get into this facility?"

"What facility?" Sam was pretty sure O'Neill didn't have to feign confusion.

"Answer the question," the sergeant snapped.

Sam abruptly realized that she couldn't let that happen. "Sir, don't say anything. This is the Gate room."

The sergeant turned his attention to her, "Shut up!"

O'Neill's expression was still bewildered. Sam said urgently, "Sir, we're still in Cheyenne Mountain."

The sergeant said, "The next person who shoots his mouth off gets this, is that clear?" He waved the gun threateningly at them.

The intercom crackled. "Take them to the holding room."

The sergeant glanced up, "Yes, sir."

O'Neill seemed to be regaining his equilibrium, "No, take me to your C.O."

The soldier promptly swung the butt end of the gun at his face, and he went down. Sam lowered her hands to try and catch him, but was immediately forced to raise them again as the sergeant raised the gun in her direction. They were escorted in the direction of the holding room and with every step Sam was more convinced of where they were. The fixtures looked antiquated and Sam tried to guess how far back in time they had traveled. Sixties, sometime, was her best guess, though it could be as early as the fifties, when the silo had been first built, or as late as the mid-seventies.

Outside the holding room, they were forced to shed their packs and equipment vests, and patted down for weapons. Sam watched with some amusement as the pile grew. Two MP-5s, four zats, four sidearms. Teal'c's staff, which they examined suspiciously but did not discover how to activate. Four combat knives. Another smaller knife that O'Neill carried in his boot. When the sergeant found that, he insisted on searching all four of them over again. Sam's small toolkit was taken. Daniel's pockets yielded a small multipurpose tool that Sam had seen him use in the field, his tape recorder, two regulation powerbars and one very non-regulation bag of peanut M&Ms. Daniel watched them confiscated mournfully, then met Sam's amused gaze and mouthed, "I was going to share." The sergeant fortunately missed this, as he prodded the powerbars in their shiny metallic wrappers suspiciously. Then they were shown into the room while their gear was loaded on a wheeled table and taken away.

As soon as they were alone, Sam inspected the cell to verify her first impression that no cameras had been installed here yet. "I don't think we're being monitored, sir."

"What's going on?" O'Neill demanded. "Why didn't you want me to say anything? Isn't this some alternate reality, like the one Daniel wandered into?"

"We're not in an alternate reality, sir," Sam said. "We've traveled in time."

#

Lieutenant George Hammond examined the peculiar assortment of equipment curiously. Some of the items' functions were clear. The semiautomatics were not a model he'd ever seen before, but they were clearly pistols. The automatic rifles were an even less familiar design, but they were also clearly weapons. The radios - he pressed the side button to confirm their function with a squawk of static- were smaller than the new transistor receivers that were just coming out and clearly advanced beyond anything available in the USA. Then there were gadgets the intruders had worn strapped to their wrists, covered with numbered buttons. He had no idea what those were. And those smooth, contoured devices... He picked one up and turned it over in his hand. Those looked more like rayguns from Star Trek than anything he'd ever seen before. They were made of some slick material that wasn't metal, but wasn't anything he was familiar with either. It was surprisingly heavy in his hands.

The Sergeant said, "The Major wants all this stowed for transport, sir."

Hammond held up the strange device, "What is it?"

He replied, "My orders are to forget I ever saw it, sir, so I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

Hammond supposed he couldn't fault the sergeant for that. That the intruders had gotten so far into the mountain without being detected was likely to be a career-ending error for Major Thornbird, and it wasn't going to do anyone else any good either. "Thank you, sergeant."

Hammond examined the guns carefully. There was something weird here. Why wouldn't spies have come in carrying American weapons and wearing Air Force uniforms? And how on Earth had they made it all the way to the bottom of the missile silo without getting caught?

He shook his head. Whatever their mysterious reasons, he wasn't going to know. He packed the strange items into chests, checking that everything was there, then locked the cases. He was commanding the escort squad that was taking the four intruders down to Petersen to be taken wherever they sent spies these days. Once he turned them over with their strange gear, they would be made to disappear. He'd never find out why they were here or see them again.

#

Sam ripped the last of the identification off her jacket and collected Daniel's and Teal'c's patches, feeling thankful that they were velcroed and they hadn't had to try and tear them off with their teeth. She tucked them into her pocket, feeling the forgotten sewing kit still tucked away there. Or cut them with the miniscule and almost useless scissors that came with the kit. It must have been too small for them to notice when they searched her. She sat down at the table opposite Teal'c. O'Neill was sitting on the bottom bunk wincing as Daniel wiped the blood from his brow with a tissue. "Ow! Enough already." Daniel shrugged, threw away the tissue and leaned against the bunkbed.

O'Neill turned to Carter, "Run that by me again?" he asked.

Sam said, "I'm fairly certain that we've traveled back in time, roughly about thirty years. For a second or two, I think we were in both time-frames simultaneously, which is why the Stargate seemed to be there one minute and was gone the next."

"Little bump in the calculations, Captain?" O'Neill seemed annoyed, but then he probably had a stinker of a headache.

Sam decided to cut him some slack, "I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what to say."

"Well, I'll tell you what. Get us back home and we'll say it never happened."

"Or get us back before we left and it won't happen." Sam looked at Daniel, who was looking fascinated. "Well, think about it. We're the first people in human history to go back in time, well, for all we know. If we could figure out how to do this again, just think of what we could do. We could actually visit Babylon, we could - we could see the Great Wall of China being built."

"Or prevent regrettable events in your history from ever occurring," Teal'c suggested.

Sam was horrified, "No! That's exactly what we *can't* do."

"Why not?" the colonel asked.

"Because of the grandfather paradox."

O'Neill gave her a blank look.

"If you went back fifty years and murdered your own grandfather, your own father would have never been born," Sam explained.

" So you're saying that if we change our own past--" Daniel said.

Sam nodded, thankful for Daniel's quick comprehension. " We could change our world in ways that we can't possibly imagine. We might even cease to exist, along with everything and everyone we know."

Teal'c said, "I myself have no part in the history of your world."

Carter was already shaking her head. "But, when they find out about the Goa'uld threat, they might have second thoughts about opening the Stargate in the first place. In which case, we never meet... and you're back to being First Prime of Apophis."

The Jaffa's eyes widened, "I see."

Daniel suggested, "So... we don't tell them about the Goa'uld."

Sam could see what they had to do, but not how they were going to manage it. She shook her head despairingly, "How do we explain the larval Goa'uld that Teal'c is carrying? Our advanced weapons, our GDO's?"

O'Neill asked, "Correct me if I'm wrong, Captain, but - haven't we altered history already just by being here?"

Probably, but there was no way to help that. She replied, "We have to concentrate on damage control. At the very least, destroy our advanced weapons and technology."

"That's gonna be a little tough," O'Neill pointed out.

"We also cannot tell anyone anything," she held up her SG-1 patch, "about who we are or where we're from."

O'Neill frowned, "This is a top secret facility. Anonymity does not go over big here."

Sam was fully aware that that was going to cause them some problems, but even so-- She said seriously, "We cannot tell them we're from the future, sir. Even if it means--" The click of the door lock warned her to break off and they turned to see two armed guards with another unarmed soldier.

The soldier said something to Daniel in another language-- Russian? She wondered, and Daniel answered automatically, "Nyet."

O'Neill winced and said in a weary tone, "Daniel?"

Daniel turned as if they were offworld and he was translating the native lingo, and said, "He just asked if we were Soviet spies. I just..." he stopped short, looking embarrassed.

O'Neill gave him a speaking look and he flushed.

The soldier said to O'Neill, "Come with me."

O'Neill rose readily, "Sure. You bet." He shot Daniel another glance as he walked out the door, "Nyet?"

The soldiers escorted O'Neill away and the door was relocked as Daniel folded his arms across the top bunk and hid his burning face against them. After a couple of moments of silence, Sam said, "Well, look on the bright side, Daniel. At least you've got them looking firmly in the wrong direction."

"That's going to be extremely comforting when we're all shot as spies." Daniel said, his voice muffled.

"Since we have just appeared without explanation in a top secret facility and we cannot tell them who we are or how we got here, that seems likely in any case," Teal'c said gravely.

Daniel raised his head and looked at him. "Thank you, Teal'c, that makes me feel much better."

Teal'c ignored the implied sarcasm and said, "You are welcome, DanielJackson."

"We have to be careful," Sam said. "We can't tell them our names."

Daniel sighed and came to sit with them at the table. "Why not? I mean we're all just kids now. There's no way they can connect us with our other selves."

"But our names could wind up in a security report that could turn up later," Sam said. "And that could change our history."

"Isn't that impossible?" Daniel said. "I mean, if we had been mentioned in a report and someone had found out and say asked us about it, wouldn't we already remember it happening?"

"I don't know," Sam had to admit. "There are a lot of theories, but this is the first I've heard that anyone could test them. Maybe this is how we get alternate universes."

Daniel blinked, "So the aliens who built the quantum mirror might only have alternate realities to visit because we traveled in time?"

"Or someone else has," she gave him bewildered shrug. "I have no idea."


	2. Chapter 2

They sat in silence as the van pulled out through the gates of Cheyenne Mountain. The sizeable indoor parking that Sam remembered was gone. She vaguely thought that it might have been built in the late 70's when NORAD was expanded.

O'Neill waited until they reached the highway then said, "Listen. I don't know where we're headed, but they'll probably try to split us up. So we're not going to have much time to--"

"--escape and hopefully live out the rest of our lives without affecting history," Sam said glumly.

"Or..." O'Neill paused meaningfully, waiting for her to give him another option.

"I can't think of an 'or' at the moment, sir," she said.

Daniel looked disturbed, "No 'or?' "

" There's an 'or.' " O'Neill said confidently.

Daniel turned an expectant look on O'Neill, "There's an 'or?' "

Sam said, "Sir, you can't just will something to happen because you want it to be a certain way."

O'Neill said firmly, "Captain... where there's a will, there's an 'or.' " he rethought his metaphor, "... way."

Teal'c brought up a point Sam hadn't yet considered. "If I remain on this planet, I will eventually be taken over by my mature symbiote."

O'Neill raised his eyebrows. "That's... not good."

"Or die," Daniel pointed out bleakly.

"Still not good," O'Neill said. "Next plan."

"Um. Well. There aren't any other immature symbiotes on Earth," Daniel thought aloud. "So we have to get offworld somehow if Teal'c's going to live."

"I would prefer it," Teal'c said calmly.

"Daniel, you read through all those files from the Pentagon," Sam said. "Do you remember where the stargate would be now?"

Daniel tried to gesture, the motion restrained by his handcuffs. "I can't say as it ever occurred to me I'd need to know. Maybe if I knew what year it was.."

"Why don't we concentrate on first things first?" O'Neill suggested. "We need to get out of these handcuffs."

Sam didn't normally carry lockpicks on missions-- or, anywhere, really-- but she was pretty sure if she had, they'd have been confiscated. She tried to think of a substitute. All their equipment had been taken, except, "Pins!"

"What?" Her teammates stared at her as she fished awkwardly in her pocket, spilling the SGC patches onto the floor.

"For lockpicks, sir." She fished out several of them and stuck them through her cuff, wishing they were longer and passed him the tiny sewing kit, "Sir."

"Pins, right." O'Neill took them and Daniel and Teal'c watched dubiously as the two Air Force officers attacked the locks.

Sam freed one wrist a bare few seconds ahead of O'Neill and immediately turned to deal with Teal'c's cuffs while O'Neill handled Daniel's. "Neat trick," the archeologist commented, rubbing his wrist. "Now what."

"Now we have to get them to stop, so we can get the drop on them," O'Neill's gaze roamed the interior of the van, looking for inspiration.

Daniel folded his glasses and tucked them inside his jacket. "One of us is sick."

"They wouldn't fall for that, would they?" Sam asked dubiously.

"It's not as old a trick now as it will be in thirty years," Daniel pointed out. He took a deep breath. "And if--"

"--the sickness is really convincing--" O'Neill said, nodding.

Sam was reminded of the weird, almost telepathic understanding they shared at times, so incomprehensible between such different personalities. Daniel stuck a finger down his throat, gagged, and then puked on the floor, letting out a dramatic moan.

O'Neill ordered, "Teal'c, bang the window." Teal'c banged. After several minutes, they felt the van slow down and pull over. O'Neill said, "Everyone make sure they can't tell our hands are free. He motioned to Daniel, who collapsed on the floor, writhing realistically next to the pool of vomit. Sam noticed he was careful not to roll into it and scooped up the fallen patches.

After a few minutes beside the road, they heard a noise at the back. The soldiers cautiously opened the doors, where Sam, Teal'c and O'Neill were staring with feigned concern at Daniel. O'Neill gave them a pleading look. "He's having trouble breathing. Help him, please." Daniel made gagging noises. Sam had to repress a queasy roiling in her own stomach.

The soldier with the gun motioned O'Neill back and he retreated obediently while the Lieutenant climbed in. Teal'c slammed a massive fist into the side of his head as Sam and O'Neill threw themselves out of the back of the van at the two armed guards. They were holding their guns pointed slightly away from the other officer and could not get them aimed in time to shoot.

Sam ducked a roundhouse swing and came in behind it, seizing the guard in a painful armlock and forcing him down onto his face. Looking to her side, O'Neill had the other one down as well, and was rifling his pockets. "No keys- Daniel?"

Daniel was up and searching through the pockets of Teal'c's victim. "Got 'em." He unlocked his own remaining cuff and transferred them to the unconscious Lieutenant, turning him over and then freezing.

"Daniel?!" O'Neill yelled.

"Yeah, yeah." Daniel scrambled to unlock Teal'c's second cuff and pass it to O'Neill for one of the guards, and then transferred Sam's cuffs to her prisoner.

"You aren't going to get away with this, you communist scum!" One of the guards snarled.

"You keep telling yourself that," O'Neill said. "Our stuff?" he asked Sam. She turned back from a quick search. "Not here, sir."

The guard sneered, "It isn't here. They shipped it separately. The second truck will be along any minute, and you'll--" He abruptly fell silent as the other guard kicked him.

"Off the road." O'Neill ordered instantly. "Bring those two with us and gag them." He pointed to the guards. He found the tool kit and pulled out a tire iron and leaned it against the van, then used a couple of pins to jam open the air valve on one tire, until it was obviously flat. Sam and Teal'c had just finished gagging the two with their own handkerchiefs when the second van pulled up.

The two soldiers in the van jumped out immediately and ran up to the stopped van with a lack of caution that Sam could only think was going to earn them severe reprimands later. Teal'c and O'Neill easied up stealthily behind them and aimed their weapons menacingly. "Freeze or I shoot." The two soldiers froze obediently, glancing back to see the two armed men behind them. Teal'c could look intimidating anytime, and the colonel's face was a mask of icy resolve. The soldiers didn't know that they couldn't afford to hurt any of them, and Sam wouldn't have doubted the threat in an instant faced with the colonel's expression. She wondered if she'd ever be able to be that scary.

They used the fourth pair of handcuffs on one of the soldiers, and Teal'c found some rope in the second van to securely truss the other one. He kept an eye on them while the others searched. "Two chests--" Sam said as she found them. "Could be our stuff." She yanked at the latches.

Daniel said, "I'm on it," and tried the lieutenant's keys until he found the ones that fit. "Yes!" He dragged out their packs and all their ordnance.

Sam looked to be sure the bound soldiers were out of earshot and then dropped her voice. "Sir, we have destroy all this stuff."

"What?" Daniel said, swinging his pack to his back. "Sam--"

"We can't, Captain." O'Neill said. "Look, you said we have to interact with people as little as possible?"

She nodded.

"Well, we're going to need out survival gear and rations if we want to hide out in the woods."

"I thought we were going to find the stargate, sir?"

"And then do what?" O'Neill asked. "Do you know how to get us home, Captain?"

"Uh. No, sir." Sam replied reluctantly.

"Then we need to get out of sight and avoid capture, and that means we need our supplies," O'Neill's tone brooked no discussion.

"Jack, the lieutenant," Daniel said.

"What, is he waking up?" O'Neill turned to look at the still form that Teal'c had dragged out beside the bound and protesting guards.

"No, he's General Hammond. I mean will be someday--"

"What?!" Sam and O'Neill both turned to stare at him. Sam was horrified. "Oh, god. We have to get out of here. We could change our history right now."

"Right." O'Neill nodded decisively. "Get your pack on, Captain." He went over to talk to Teal'c. The Jaffa nodded and hauled Lieutenant George Hammond into a fireman's carry.

"Sir!" Carter followed him, protesting. "What are you doing?"

"He's coming with us." O'Neill checked to be sure the trucks had no radios, then motioned everyone toward the second. "All aboard, folks." As he passed the bound guards, they cursed him roundly and he tossed them a sloppy salute, "Give my regards to the Major when you see him, gentlemen." O'Neill swung into the cab of the second truck and started it up. Daniel scrambled up to ride shotgun and Sam gritted her teeth and accompanied Teal'c into the back with the unconscious Lieutenant.

They didn't go far, less than an hour into the mountains before they pulled off the road and stopped. Teal'c and Sam were already opening the back door when O'Neill banged on the side of the truck, calling "Everybody out!"

"Sir." Sam had marshalled her arguments during the short ride. "We can't take the lieutenant with us. We're already endangering our history."

"You have a way home for us, yet, Captain?" O'Neill asked.

Sam ground her teeth before answering evenly. "No, sir."

"Then we need to get a message back to base." O'Neill said. He gestured to the back of the van. "And of all the time travelers here present, Lieutenant Hammond here is the only one I can see in a position to do anything."

"What?"

"We all travel through time, Sam," Daniel said. "From the present to the future, one day at a time."

"Look," O'Neill struggled to explain. "We know that we didn't, say, send a letter to ourselves telling us not to go on this mission. Because if we did, we wouldn't be here. But suppose we convince Hammond not to send us on this mission. Won't we immediately pop back into the future?"

"I don't know, sir." Carter admitted. "Until today, this was all theoretical. We might just split off an alternative reality where we never went on this mission, while we stay right here."

O'Neill frowned. "That would suck."

Sam was turning over what he had said. At the very least it seemed to offer more hope than any idea she had. "I don't know what we should do, sir. I just think we have to try to make as few changes as possible."

"Well, we've kidnapped Lieutenant Hammond already. How much worse can it get?" Daniel asked.

"Should we not leave this place before we can be observed?" suggested Teal'c.

"Right," O'Neill said. "Everyone make sure you've got your gear out of the truck. Then we push it into the ravine. We keep Hammond for now."

Once they were sure the gear was out, O'Neill put the van in neutral and then let it roll toward the ravine, jumping clear before it reached the edge. The van went over the edge in a crash of rending metal. O'Neill peered over the edge. "The trees should keep them from spotting it, even from the air," he said.

"Will they not detect the heat?" Teal'c asked.

"No heat sensors, Teal'c," Daniel said. "They won't be developed for a few years yet."

Teal'c looked thoughtful. "I had not realized how recently your advanced technology had been developed."

Sam realized that to the Jaffa, this was recent indeed. Somewhere out among the stars, Teal'c was battling other Jaffa in the name of Goa'uld gods and had been for some time. The Jaffa picked up the limp form of the Texan lieutenant and they hiked deeper into the forest.

#

Hammond awoke, immediately conscious of a throbbing pain in the head. As sensation returned, he realized that he was lying on the ground, and there was a smell of woodsmoke somewhere close by. He opened his eyes to see a young man clad in dull green kneeling beside a campfire, feeding dry sticks into it. Or was that two men? He tried to move his hand up to his eyes, only realizing by the jingle and the tug on his other wrist that he was handcuffed.

"You're awake." The young man came to his side swiftly, sounding concerned. "We were starting to get worried." It was the young man who had answered Sergeant Willis in Russian. Memory flooded back, the young man slumped on the floor gasping, the sudden attack.

Hammond's expression must have betrayed his disbelief. "Really," the man said. "We didn't want to hurt you." He came over and peered into his eyes. "I think you're a little concussed. My friend has a hard fist."

Hammond thought, _'You can say that again,'_ but didn't speak aloud. Despite his apparent concern, the man was watching Hammond carefully, and the Air Force lieutenant didn't think a lot of his chances of overpowering him, as weak and sick as he felt. The other man held up a hand, "How many fingers?"

Hammond said huskily, "Hammond, George, Lieutenant," and recited his serial number.

The young man looked startled, then a little amused. "I don't think the Geneva convention was intended to apply to answering legitimate medical questions."

Hammond guessed that if he was to have any hope of getting out of here, he needed to know more. He asked, "Are you a doctor, then?"

"No, well, yes. Um, not exactly," The young man gave him a suspicious look. "How many fingers, Lieutenant?" he asked again.

"Unless you have eight fingers to a hand, too many," George told him. If they really didn't want to hurt him, may be he could get them to take him to a doctor. Or at least underestimate him and give him a chance to escape.

"Ah," The young man gave him a sympathetic look. "Sorry to hear it." He carefully laid a hand on Hammond's forehead. "You feel a little cool. Think you can sit up while I get a blanket around you?"

The man had to hoist him up by brute strength as George found that his head whirled alarmingly when he tried to lift it. The man wrapped a thin crackly sheet of something around his shoulders. George wouldn't have thought it was heavy enough to do anything, but he immediately started to feel warmer as the young man helped him to lie down again.

"Daniel. How's he doing?" That was the older man, the one who'd mouthed off to Major Thornbird. George had listened to the interrogation over the intercom and had had to stifle a guilty laugh as the man had claimed to be Captain Kirk. The gray-haired man was carrying a load of deadwood, which he dumped under the overhang.

"Oh, so-so," Daniel said. "He's awake, but I think he's got a concussion. Teal'c hit him awfully hard."

The older man peered into George's eyes and then turned back and said, "Well, you know the drill."

"I won't let him sleep too long," Daniel told him.

George wondered who they thought they were fooling. He'd been told that sleep deprivation was one of the methods that enemy agents used in their interrogation of captured personnel. He dozed only to have Daniel shake him periodically awake, sometimes flashing a light in his eyes. When he finally awoke feeling rested, it was dark and he was aware that a number of hours had gone by. He lay unmoving, trying to get a sense of his surroundings. The shallow cave he was lying in was now shaded by a couple of branches, with other greenery woven in between them, completely camoflaging the tiny camp.

The four spies were sitting around the fire holding what looked like the square trays he had seen in their packs. They smelled like food. One of the branches burned through, sending up a shower of sparks. The blond woman said, "A flare."

Daniel looked up from his cup. The gray-haired man said, "What?"

She said, "That's the only explanation. We had to have been sent back because of a solar flare."

The black man with the curious emblem on his forehead asked, "Was there not an error in your calculations?"

She replied, "I don't think so, Teal'c. But after the Abydos mission, when we couldn't figure out a way to make the gate work again, I was asked to research alternative applications for the gate. Some of the figures I got suggested that the gate could be used to travel in time, under the right circumstances."

"What'd you come up with?" The older man asked.

"Well, just this--" She set her soup aside and picked up a stick. George noticed a nasty cut on her hand, already stitched. She must have had that when she got here, he thought. They intruders hadn't been given any medical treatment. She was sketching something in the dirt. George couldn't see what she was drawing, but didn't dare draw attention to himself.

"What if a massive solar flare just happened to occur at the exact moment that we were traveling between Earth and another stargate? If the wormhole itself was redirected closer to the sun because of the Earth's magnetic field-- " She scratched busily in the dirt. "-- the increased gravity could slingshot us back to Earth."

"Why haven't we tried this before?" Daniel asked.

The woman replied, "Because flares are impossible to predict. Light takes several minutes to travel between the Earth and the sun, so by the time a flare of sufficient magnitude has been confirmed, it's already too late. That's why I was told not to pursue my research into using the gate for time travel. We didn't see any way to make it predictable enough to use."

The young man slumped a little. "So you're saying that we could use one to get home, but they're impossible to predict, so we can't use one to get home."

"Something like that," she said.

Hammond had been listening intently, but then dismissed the obviously ludicrous story. Time travel? Traveling from Earth to another 'stargate', whatever that was? What did they take him for? He shifted slightly and the odd thin blanket crackled.

"Lieutenant Hammond is awake." The black man announced solemnly.

The gray-haired man looked over at him. "Hey, George. How are you feeling?"

He pushed himself upright, finding that not only were his hands tied, but his feet had been hobbled together. "I need to, ah--" He glanced at the blond woman, lovely in the firelight.

"Take a walk?" The gray-haired man asked with a touch of amusement. "Sure." He got up and he and Teal'c took Hammond's arms and escorted him out of the camp to a thick clump of bushes where a neat latrine had been dug. He did his business and they brought him back. He was more grateful than he should have been for their steadying arms.

When they got back to the fireside, they handed him one of the hot packets of food. Opened, it seemed rather like an odd sort of TV dinner. It tasted better than he expected, which still wasn't very good, but Hammond was too hungry to care. As he shoveled it in, the older man asked, "So, George, how much of that did you hear?"

"As much as you intended, I'm sure," he replied steadily, swallowing. He was afraid that the humane treatment was nearly at an end.

"It's all true," the younger man said.

"Daniel!" the woman protested.

"Sam, you said it yourself. There's no way to predict a solar flare. We can't stay here. I'm not spending thirty years hiding in a cave, here or...anywhere else. Hammond is our only hope of going home." The light glinted off his glasses. His voice was calm and persuasive with an underlying warmth that suggested they were more than just colleagues. Actually, George realized, that closeness was something that all four of them shared. Even their movements around the campfire suggested an underlying harmony. What was even stranger, he didn't feel excluded, despite being uncertain of the strangers' intentions.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" the older man said.

"What?"

"Even if Hammond helps us, we're going to have to wait thirty years for him to do whatever he's going to do. We have to do something all that time."

"Like what, sir?" the woman asked, looking a little nervous.

"Find the stargate."

Daniel said, "Find the stargate? That's - that's the plan?"

"Elegant in its simplicity, don't you think?"

"And if we don't find the stargate?"

The older man said, "Oh, we can find it one way or another. Though this time, I'd like to avoid breaking a leg."

Daniel looked nonplussed, "You want us to go to-- That's--that's a fabulous plan. And once we find it, then what?"

"We leave." Teal'c said.

They all looked at him.

"There are places we have not yet been. Places where we could make a difference without affecting any of the history we have already experienced," he said.

The woman, Sam, was nodding, "That could work sir. At the very least it will minimize the damage we could do here."

"And it would give us a shot at saving Teal'c's life," the younger man said.

The older man turned back to the baffled lieutenant, who had decided that they were either all first-rate actors or quite insane. "So what about him?" The question was directed to Sam.

"Sir?" the woman asked.

"Well, ideally, whatever we do isn't going to matter much. Because George here is going to change things so it never happens." The man looked at Hammond, "You done with that?" At Hammond's nod, he took the food wrappers back.

"I'm not going to help you," Hammond said firmly.

"So what does he have to do?" The older man ignored him as though he hadn't spoken and looked at the woman.

"Well." The woman looked over at him and bit her lower lip meditatively. "He could just stop us from going, but I'm concerned about the alternate universe problem."

"So you said."

"We need to know when some flares of the right kind are, to send us back, right?" Daniel said. "He could write us a note telling us when the next flares are." He looked at the older man, "If he put it in say, your vest pocket, we wouldn't even know it was there until we looked."

They all turned and stared at the vest pocket. After a moment of silence, he unzipped it, and felt around. They all held their breath until he pulled out a pair of sunglasses. "No note."

Hammond could have told them that. He had gone through their pockets himself before packing their gear for transport. If there had been a note, he would have found it. Of course for there to have been a note, he would have to believe that all this insane story was true. "I told you, I'm not going to help you," he said more loudly. If they thought Hammond would ever cooperate with the enemy, they were in for a surprise.

They turned and looked at him. The older man smiled a little wryly. "Well, Lieutenant. That's something you'll have to figure out for yourself. You're going to have thirty years to decide whether to save us or not. And by the time you have to make the decision, you'll have known us all for a while." His glance shifted sideways, and then back as if he was stopping himself from saying something. "Some of us longer than others. You have to understand, we know you-- will know you-- pretty well. Too well to believe you'll leave us stranded if there's anything you can do about it."

Hammond gave them a stubborn look.

The man shrugged, "So tell me, Lieutenant. What's the date?"

"The date." Hammond rolled his eyes and surrendered to weirdness. "August fourth- or fifth, now if it's after midnight." At the other man's impatient gesture, he added. "1969."

" '69... " the man repeated. He turned to Daniel. "What happened in '69?"

Daniel appeared to be searching his memory. "The - the moon landing." He turned to Hammond, "That was just a couple of weeks ago, right?"

This was ridiculous. Hammond said dryly, "The entire world knows that."

The other man said, "But not too many people know you watched it from your father's bedside in his hospital room... just two days after his first heart attack."

Hammond was stunned. Then furious. Obviously this operation had been far more carefully planned than he had realized. "So you've been spying on me. So what?"

"You're going to have two daughters," Daniel said. "Jack?"

The older man said, "Elizabeth and Deborah. Um..Elizabeth may be around now, I'm not sure about Deborah."

Hammond pressed his lips together. His daughter Elizabeth would be three next month. And his wife was pregnant. The new baby would be due in December.

"Sir," Sam spoke up. "Be careful what you tell him. Foreknowlege could change what he does."

The other man nodded, "I know, C-Captain, but we have to tell him enough that he believes us. Stuff we could never have known in advance." He turned back to Hammond. "You'll be a general when we meet again. And you'll be really pissed off at me. Try to remember that I had a really, really good reason for doing what I did, and cut me some slack."

Daniel chuckled. "And how self-serving is that, Jack?" He turned to Hammond. "Let's see- 1969- Nixon was just elected. He'll be reelected in '72, but resign in 1974, following a scandal that almost resulted in his impeachment. Also coming up- um, next year, I think, Apollo 13 happens.. a moon mission that fails. The astronauts make it back, but only after a harrowing ordeal." He looked at Jack, "Enough? I can't offhand recall anything harmless but significant happening between now and then."

"Enough," the older man nodded.

Hammond looked at them. "So what is it that you think I'm going to do?"

Jack said seriously, "You're going to keep everything we've told you a secret. Not just because it's important. You don't want the Air Force to decide you're insane. And then, in 1999, you're going to be in charge of a very important project. And you'll know all of us. And when we leave on this mission in October of 1999, you'll have to find some way of getting us information on solar flares, that will let us figure out a way home."

Hammond got a queer feeling in the pit of his stomach. All four of them were giving him identical looks of serene confidence. Trust. "And now what?" he asked.

Jack smiled, "Well, we wait for daybreak, and then we get you back to civilization and let you go."

"Let me go."

"Well, you're never going to make general if you stay AWOL," the man said cheerfully.

They set watches, in the matter of fact manner of soldiers in the field. Daniel had first watch. Hammond struggled to a sitting position, shedding the metallic blanket, which had become far too warm. After sleeping most of the day, Hammond wasn't feeling drowsy any longer, though his head still throbbed fiercely. "So what's this secret project I'm going to be in charge of?" he asked the younger man quietly.

"Sam thinks if we tell you that, you might inadvertantly change something that shouldn't be changed," Daniel said.

Hammond remembered their conversation when he had first awakened, "You talked about going from Earth to another- stargate? What's a stargate?"

"You'll find out," Daniel said. "If you're patient."

Hammond scowled. Daniel was too alert at the moment to let information drop. He tried a different tack, "So if you're not Russians, why do you speak Russian?"

Daniel shrugged. "I speak Greek and Italian, too. Does that mean I'm spying for them?" He fell silent for a moment, and when Hammond didn't reply, he said, "I speak a lot of languages."

"How did you get into Cheyenne Mountain?" Hammond asked.

"It will be obvious in time," a flicker of humor showed on the serious young man's face. "Go to sleep, Lieutenant. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life."


	3. Chapter 3

The huge black man shook them awake, an hour before dawn. "I believe our location has been discovered."

Jack cursed fluently. "Damn. Someone must have seen us on the road." He glanced around the cave. "We have to get rid of all our futuristic gear. Pile it here."

The four stripped themselves of their unfamiliar weapons, leaving only the guns they had taken from their guards. Last of all, Sam piled a stack of patches on top. Hammond craned his neck-- he couldn't make out the logo, some sort of symbol over what looked like the planet Earth.

Jack did something to the curvy device that Hammond had dubbed a 'raygun', and it seemed to expand into a Z-shape. Jack fired three blue bolts at the pile of gear. The fire ran all over the pile, then the whole thing flickered into mist and disappeared. Hammond's mouth fell open. He'd never seen anything like that before.

"What about the last zat?" Daniel said, gesturing to the gun in Jack's hand.

"Give it to me," Sam offered. "I'll set it to overload, blow it to bits. There won't be much to analyze."

As she took the gun, they heard rustling sounds outside. "We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands up."

"That's your cue, George-me-boy," Jack said to Hammond. He stooped to cut the bindings on George's legs. "Git."

"But what about you?" Hammond asked.

The four strangers exchanged swift glances that he couldn't read. "Don't you bother about us," Jack assured him. "We'll be fine."

Hammond yelled, "It's me, Hammond. I'm coming out." He held his cuffed hands above his head, and walked, still a bit unsteadily out of the shelter."

"Hands apart!" Someone yelled.

"I can't, they're cuffed," he called back.

In minutes, he was being ushered back toward a military ambulance. "How many were there?" And intelligence officer asked. "Did they meet accomplices?"

"Not that I saw," he answered. "It was just the four."

He looked around the camp, counting vehicles and realized that Thornbird had called out an enormous number of troops, far more than he would have thought the man could have commanded. He wondered if Jack and the others had anticipated that. It didn't seem likely. Minutes dragged by, as George listened to the chatter on the radio. If he was any judge, the strangers were completely surrounded.

Off beyond the trees, he heard the chatter of automatic weapons fire. "Damn it." The intelligence officer swore. "I was hoping we'd take them alive."

The sound was moving up and to his right, Hammond tracked it to where the top of the ridge was visible above the trees. He saw a dark figure break across the field, the big man, Teal'c, with the other three behind. He staggered as he was hit by weapons fire, and slowed. A flash of fair hair marked another figure as Sam. She ran beside her comrade and looped his arm over her shoulders, pulling him over the ridge. The weapons fire cut down the two men following them in the middle of the field. They dropped and lay still. A few seconds later, there was a boom as something exploded. And just before it, had there been a bluish flash? Hammond couldn't be sure.

They had freed him from the cuffs and were examining the lump on his head when they brought the bodies down. The two men were soaked in blood from shoulder to knee, but their faces were untouched and oddly peaceful. Sam's blue eyes were open and very wide, her shining hair ruffled. Her cut hand lay curled across her chest. There were tears smudged down her cheek cutting tracks through a smear of blood. She'd seen her friends shot, he thought.

One of the soldiers carrying the stretcher looked strung out and guilty. "She ran right at me," he said defensively. "She would have killed me."

"And the fourth man got away," the intelligence officer said grimly. "She was the decoy."

"He can't get far," the other man protested. "I know we hit him."

"Was anyone hurt?" Hammond asked.

"Naw," another of the soldiers replied. "They were lousy shots."

Hammond couldn't take his eyes off them. He knew Teal'c hadn't gotten away. There was something about him-- something that would have shown up in an autopsy, maybe-- that they couldn't afford the Air Force to find out. Sam had used her strange raygun to destroy his body, and then committed suicide. He was forced to admit however strange their story was, they had believed it.

#

"What did they want?"

"I don't know, sir." Hammond said. "They said they wanted me to help them, but I refused."

Thornbird nodded approval. "You did well, Lieutenant." He looked at his subordinate appraisingly.

Hammond knew what he was seeing, the bruises where Teal'c had hit him, where he'd hit the floor of the van, the chafed wrists from the handcuffs, the pallor that was a reminder of his still-aching head. "Thank you, sir," he said dully.

Thornbird's military demeanor softened. "I mean that, Hammond. They obviously put a lot of pressure on you to talk, and you resisted until we came and got you."

Hammond flashed on a young man with gentle hands saying, _"I don't think the Geneva convention was intended to apply to answering legitimate medical questions."_ Those were the only questions they had asked him. Well, and the date. He said, "I shouldn't have been taken in the first place, sir."

Thornbird nodded briskly. "True enough, Lieutenant. And that's why you won't get a commendation out of this." He shuffled through the stack of papers on his desk. "So, about the strange weapons?"

"I heard them say they couldn't allow them to fall into our hands, sir. I don't know what they did with them," Hammond reported stoically. He could hear Jack saying, _"You're going to keep everything we've told you a secret. Not just because it's important. You don't want the Air Force to decide you're insane."_ Jack hadn't told him that he'd also keep the secret because he had seen three still bodies on stretchers, three bodies that hours before had looked at him with trust and faith. They had been crazy. They must have been crazy. How could he believe what they had said?

He was vaguely conscious that Thornbird was talking again, and supposed he should be paying attention. "--try and put all this behind you, Lieutenant. Dismissed."

He certainly would. He was going to do his very best to forget all about it. "Yes, sir," Hammond said and left.

#

"An' I want to propose a toast--" The young captain was more than a little drunk, but it wasn't every day a guy and his best buddy got promoted together. Jacob Carter, brand new captain's bars shining on his collar, raised his bottle of beer to that buddy. "Captain George Hammond!"

There was a ragged chorus of cheering. Viet Nam was a hot, sweltering, filthy and dangerous duty posting. When there was something to celebrate, they did so raucously.

George drank and proposed a toast to Jake. A bit later, when things had calmed down, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the dirty envelope he had received earlier that afternoon. Jake slid into the chair opposite. "Letter from home?"

"Yeah," George grinned sheepishly at his friend. "Saving all the good things to enjoy at once."

Jake smiled reminiscently. "Yeah, I can't wait for letters from Miranda and the kids."

George knew that his friend had a wife and two children at home. He ripped open the letter, damp from being carried in the pocket of his sweat-dampened shirt. "Eleanor has Lizzie write to me, but they tend to be long on illustration, short on content--" As his eyes scanned the neatly penned page, he felt a chill like a gallon of icewater had just been poured down his spine, and he was completely sobered. George Hammond had all but forgotten his strange experience in '69. A month later, his wife Eleanor had miscarried a son, and he had dismissed the strange predictions and plea for help as the lunacy it was. Now it was forcibly recalled to mind.

"Something wrong?" Jake asked with swift concern.

"No-" George tried to smile. "I'm a father again." He looked at the date, "She was born several weeks early, but Eleanor says they're both doing fine.

"Hey, congratulations again!" Jake said. He called to the waiter to serve them another drink.

George's eyes dropped back to his wife's words on the page. _"--know we hadn't really made a decision, but when she came early I had to choose, so I have named her Deborah Louise, after my aunt and your mother. I hope you like it--"_

Jake was proposing another toast, but George paid him scarcely any attention. What had Daniel said? Nixon would be reelected in '72 and resign. And something about one of the Apollo missions. Apollo 15? His wife's letter crinkled in his hand, and he stopped to smooth it out and fold it carefully. Jack had said, _'You'll be a general when we meet again.'_ He had gained not just a daughter, but a destiny.

#

"Jake!" Hammond grinned all over his face. Jake had earned himself an early return from 'Nam after getting shot down, and then shot in the leg. It was good to see him up and around.

"George, good to see you." Jake grinned at him. "Hon, this is my friend George Hammond."

George introduced his own wife to Jake and Miranda. He felt a nagging sense of familiarity he couldn't place at the sight of his friend's wife. He almost asked her if they'd met before, but his friend was telling Eleanor about the promotion bash.

Jake continued, "I'll never forget him getting the news of his daughter's birth. He just about passed out."

"Unlike you, who was already about to pass out from excessive celebration of your promotion," George retorted amiably. He bounced eighteen-month old Deborah in his arms and she smiled delightedly. "Isn't she a charmer?"

Deborah was duly admired. Elizabeth tugged at her mother's hand, and said in a stage whisper, "Mom, you said there was another girl here to play with."

Eleanor smiled at her daughter, "I'm afraid we had to promise Lizzie she wouldn't be the only child here."

Jake said, "Oh, sure." He looked a bit dubiously at the Barbie that Lizzie was clutching. "Well, our eldest is a girl, although sometimes we're a bit hard put to tell."

His wife chuckled, "Jake!" Just then, two blond children came racing around the house. They both wore jeans and T-shirts, short hair, and were in nearly identical states of grubbiness.

"Dad!" The first one protested vigorously. "Will you tell Mark to stay away from my rockets? He broke one." She brandished the evidence belligerently.

"I was just playing," the slightly smaller figure protested.

"You're supposed to fire it, not wave it around making whooshing noises," his sister informed him in a distinctly superior tone.

"Kids!" Jake raised his voice to a muted bellow. "Come say hello to Captain and Mrs. Hammond." He turned back to his friend as the two children raised identical wide blue eyes and obediently murmured hello. "George, Eleanor, these are my son Mark and my daughter Samantha."

"Sam," the daughter protested sotto voce.

Hammond swallowed hard. Now he knew who Miranda had reminded him of. She had to be what, eight or nine? The age was just about right. He looked at the rocket she was clutching. "You seem to be missing a fin on your spacecraft."

She gave him dubious look, "It won't go to space. A couple hundred feet if the fuel is loaded right. And if Mark hadn't broken it."

"You like rockets?" Hammond asked.

She nodded vehemently. "I'm going to be an astronaut someday."

Hammond remembered a much older version of this girl scratching in the dirt beside a fire, talking about traveling from Earth to-- somewhere else. "I bet you will."

She gave him a gratified look, and smiled. Jake introduced Lizzie to Sam and told his son they'd talk later about him playing with his sister's toys. Mark slunk away looking sullen and chastened. The two girls regarded one another a bit warily and then disappeared up to Samantha's room. Jake smiled fondly after his daughter's retreating figure. "She may very well become an astronaut, if she stays interested," he told George and Eleanor proudly. "She's smart as a whip."


	4. Chapter 4

General George Hammond stood by his wife's grave, feeling lost and somehow resentful. He'd waved Elizabeth and Deborah to go on ahead. "Ellie, my love," He whispered. "I don't think it was supposed to be this way." A dozen times during her illness, he'd wanted to tell her about his destiny. He'd never doubted once after meeting Samantha Carter that she and her friends had told him the truth that strange day in 1969. He hadn't needed Nixon's resignation or Apollo 13 though he'd accepted them as as additional buttresses to his confidence. But he was no nearer to finding the stargate than he'd ever been. He could have taken early retirement two years ago and had these last months with Ellie. But he hadn't wanted to let go. He had four lives still to save.

He turned away from the grave, a bit surprised to see a uniformed figure underneath the trees waiting for him. "Jake." His friend must have flown in. He'd had no idea. "Thank you for coming."

"I'm very sorry, George," Jacob gripped his shoulder.

George knew he understood, he'd lost his Miranda quite a few years ago now. He nodded wordlessly. "How are Mark and Samantha?" he asked, as he always did.

Jake accepted the change of subject gracefully. "Sam's fine, as always. She's still at the Pentagon."

Hammond frowned. "I thought she was stationed at Cheyenne Mountain." His pulse had raced when he had heard she was there. But it was too early. They weren't leaving until 1999. There was time for him to be reassigned.

"She was, she was transferred last spring," Jacob said, oblivious to the depth of his interest. "And Mark and I aren't getting along very well. Again. Still." He sighed.

George knew that Jacob and his son had been at odds for years. He'd often thought that quite probably it was the attention and approval that Jacob had disproportionately lavished on his sister that Mark resented, even more than he blamed his father for Miranda's death. Still, it wasn't the kind of thing his friend would be willing to hear. "I'm sorry to hear it," he said noncommittally.

#

Hammond was surprised when General Ryan asked to see him personally. Then his heart started beating a little faster. This was it, he could feel it in his bones.

"I know you've been thinking of retirement, Hammond--" Ryan said, after waving him to a seat.

"Not so much, now, sir," Hammond said.

Ryan nodded understandingly. "I'm assigning you to Cheyenne Mountain, taking over command from General Andrew West."

"NORAD, sir?" Hammond asked with just a trace of puzzlement in his tone. He could see the thick file under Ryan's hand. There were his answers, some of them, anyway.

"Not exactly," Ryan chuckled appreciatively. "You're going to love this, George." He slid the thick file across the table. "Would you believe the Air Force has sent an expedition to another planet?"

#

Hammond sat in his office, twenty-seven floors below the surface, feeling a little non-plussed. He'd been quite surprised to find that the events he was here to set in motion had apparently been completed years ago. Instead he'd found himself dealing with the unending tedious minutia involved in closing down what was left of a top secret program. He knew now how the four intruders had gotten into Cheyenne Mountain. The gate was there in the future.

He reopened the file on the stargate program, as he had a hundred times since Ryan had handed it to him. There was Samantha Carter. She'd worked on the program and been transferred away by West. He grimaced faintly. West had been a raving paranoid. Clearly he hadn't wanted General Jacob Carter's daughter anywhere near his secret mission to blow up another planet. Colonel Jack O'Neill, looking younger, colder and grimmer than the man he'd met all those years ago. Dr. Daniel Jackson, archeologist, deceased. He'd died in the inferno of a nuclear explosion under the burning sun of Abydos, thousands of lightyears from the world of his birth. There was no sign of Teal'c, the large black man. Hammond remembered Samantha Carter insisting that if they weren't careful, they could inadvertantly change what was meant to be. Was it one of those changes that had sent them to Abydos early, killed Daniel and sealed the stargate forever?

There was a knock on the door. Hammond flipped the file closed and looked up. "Come in."

Sergent Harriman stuck his head in. "Sir? Um, Supply had a question about the disposition of these?"

Hammond took the envelopes that the man handed him. They were patches. Earth against a black field, surrounded by stars and superimposed on it the stargate symbol for Earth. "What are these?" he asked. "Something left over from the first mission?" He'd last seen one of these on top of a pile of advanced weapons as Jack O'Neill disintegrated them.

"No, sir," Harriman said. "They were designed when they put forward the exploration team proposal after the first mission returned. Of course the proposal never came to anything when they couldn't reach any other worlds through the gate." He'd been transferred in after the first mission and trained on the stargate control interface that Samantha Carter had designed while they were unsuccessfully trying to contact other worlds. But he was fascinated by the stargate and had learned everything he could about it. Hammond had unashamedly pumped him for information and consequently knew the other man regarded him as a member of the unofficial group of people who wanted to see something done with it again. Certainly he was a lot more useful than Hammond's nominal XO, Samuels.

"After the first mission returned?" Hammond asked thoughtfully. Had history changed, or hadn't it? That was the question.

"Yes, sir." Harriman looked puzzled by his interest, but continued. "I have a request from supply to scrap these."

Hammond took it and looked it over consideringly. "Request denied," he said. "Tell them to keep them a while longer."

Harriman gave him a politely puzzled look, but said, "Yes, sir," and closed the door after him.

Hammond pulled out the latest report he had seen from Samantha Carter at the Pentagon. She had been lobbying hard for the stargate program to be reinstated and was looking at possible alternate applications. He remembered the faith those four had placed in green young Lieutenant Hammond. Maybe it was time to show some faith in them. He glanced down at the list, then penned an official request for further analysis into three of her proposals. One of them was time travel.

#

Hammond was looking at his calendar. Ten months to retirement. Probably another five of that to close this base, and another to finish the paperwork. The stargate would be dead and buried in two full years before October 1999. He wondered what had been changed that made things come out differently. The whoop of the siren caught him completely by surprise. As he popped out of his office, he realized that it was the alarm in the gate room. The gate room! Hammond ran for the stargate. He half expected to see a blue-eyed young man in threadbare fatigues strolling down the ramp. If the timeline was intact, then Daniel Jackson had to be alive.

He hustled after the guards, hearing gunfire as they approached the gate room. As he entered on their heels, he saw a figure in fantastic armor, holding a female sergeant hostage before the shimmering blue wormhole. Hammond stopped, momentarily stunned. That was Teal'c holding the woman, or someone very like him. After twenty-eight years he couldn't be sure. He yelled, "Hold your fire!" and surveyed the group. The man in golden armor appeared to be the one in charge. His eyes glowed momentarily. Then his helmet snapped shut, and he wheeled and strode through the wormhole, followed by Teal'c and the hostage. The wormhole shimmered and shredded into wisps of mist, then vanished.

Hammond walked slowly up the ramp, staring at the alien device, his mind working furiously. The glowing-eyed alien of the Abydos report was still alive. That meant that O'Neill had lied, and not just about Jackson's death. He turned to see Major Samuels coming in, well after the firing had ceased, the toad. "Samuels!" he barked.

"Sir?" Samuels said.

"Find me Colonel Jack O'Neill, and bring him here. I want to have a little talk with him."

#

Hammond composed himself behind his desk before he responded to Samuel's knock, "Come."

Samuels showed him in. O'Neill was younger than he remembered, with brown hair and not gray. He was dressed in civvies with a very non-regulation haircut. "General Hammond, Colonel Jack O'Neill."

"Retired," O'Neill qualified.

Hammond wasn't entirely sure where to take this. It was still two years early, and Jack had said he'd know them well. 'Not yet, then.' He tried to figure out how he'd behave if they were really meeting for the first time, as if he really didn't suspect the man had lied through his teeth on the Abydos mission report. He decided to start slow, "I can see that. Me, I'm on my last tour; time to start getting my thoughts together. Maybe write a book. You ever think about writing a book about your exploits in the line of duty?"

O'Neill responded laconically, "Thought about it. But then I'd have to shoot anyone who actually read it." After a moment of unresponsive silence from Hammond and Samuels, he continued. "That's a joke, sir. Most of my work for the past ten years has been classified."

Hammond said, "Yes, of course."

O'Neill asked, "Major Samuels mentioned something about the stargate?"

Hammond had to suppress a smile. If he wasn't very much mistaken, here was another member of the club who'd like to see the stargate program reinstated. "Down to business. I can do that." He rose and led the way out of his office. "This way."

In the infirmary, he studied O'Neill's face as the doctor pulled back the sheet from the corpse of the dead alien. "Anyone you know, Colonel?"

The doctor offered, "They're not human."

O'Neill gave him a sarcastic look, "Ya think?"

Warner pointed out the slits on the alien's abdomen. "Best we can tell, these slits are actually a pouch similar to that found in a marsupial."

"Like a kangaroo," Samuels clarified unnecessarily.

The doctor said, "We haven't done an autopsy yet."

Hammond said, "These people - or aliens, whatever you want to call them - came through, killed four of my people and kidnapped another using advanced weapons."

"Weapons, sir?" O'Neill asked.

One of the officers handed the long stafflike weapon to Hammond, who passed it to O'Neill.

Samuels said, "We can't figure out how to operate it."

O'Neill turned it end for end, flipping a switch in the middle with his thumb. The ends of the staff snapped apart and crackled with energy. He flipped it back and the weapon shut off. Hammond was irritated that he had jumped as much as Samuels, "Seen one of those before, I take it?" He didn't remember reading about these in the reports. And he'd read the reports about fifty times.

"Yes, sir," confirmed O'Neill quietly, handing the weapon back.

#

Hammond's irritation was growing the longer he talked with O'Neill. He remembered the man telling him, "You'll be a general when we meet again. And you'll be really pissed off at me. Try to remember that I had a really, really good reason for doing what I did, and cut me some slack." He wasn't sure that any reason was going to be sufficient to exonerate him for the gaping omissions and outright untruths in that report. Not to mention three dead soldiers and one missing. He wondered why Kawalsky and Ferretti had gone along with it. He summoned up patience and said, "Tell me about Daniel Jackson, Colonel."

The colonel wandered over to the window, looking at Kawalsky and Ferretti sitting down with another officer. "Why are they questioning my men?" he asked.

Hammond couldn't help respecting him for caring about his people, but he didn't let it show in his tone. "They're not your men anymore, Colonel. You retired. Daniel Jackson?"

"You read the report?" O'Neill said uncomfortably.

Hammond said, "Yes." He felt another unwilling flicker of respect. The man was clearly unhappy about lying to a superior officer.

"It's all there." O'Neill said.

"Is it?" Samuels said rather insultingly.

O'Neill ignored him, "What's this all about, General?"

"You didn't like Daniel Jackson, did you?" There was a chink in O'Neill's lies somewhere, and Hammond was sure it was Daniel Jackson. Why had O'Neill said he was dead?

"Daniel was a scientist. He sneezed a lot. Basically, he was a geek, sir."

"So you didn't have a lot of time for him." Samuels said. He might be a weasel, but he had his uses, Hammond reflected. He'd picked up the general's implication that O'Neill had failed his responsibility toward the civilian, and was using it like a chisel.

O'Neill responded defensively, "I didn't say that. He also saved my life and found a way home for my men and me. A little thing like that kind of makes a person grow on you, you know what I mean?"

Hammond switched tactics. "According to the mission brief, your orders were to go through the Stargate to detect any possible threat to Earth and if found, to detonate a nuclear device and destroy the Gate on the other side."

"Yes."

Hammond pressed, "But that's not what you did, is it?"

O'Neill said, "Not right away. Ra's forces overpowered my team and took the weapon before I could arm it."

"But with Dr. Jackson's help, you eventually regained control and did in fact detonate the weapon, yes?" Samuels asked.

"Yes."

"So to the best of your knowledge, Daniel Jackson and everyone else you knew on Abydos is dead. Correct?" Hammond asked.

"That's correct." O'Neill confirmed.

Hammond had half-expected that he wouldn't be able to break O'Neill's story. He was glad he had had the bomb sent over from Petersen. "Good," he said, rising. "Then you won't mind if I authorize a go-ahead on our plan."

Minutes later, he achieved the result he had wanted. "General, you can't do that," O'Neill protested, staring at the bomb.

"Countdown's already started," Hammond said. "Unless you have something to add." _'No, colonel, I'm not bluffing.'_

O'Neill stared at him for several moments, gauging his sincerity, then squared his shoulders and came to attention beside the general, "General Hammond. Sir."

Hammond turned and looked at him expectantly.

O'Neill confessed in a rather pained tone. "I regret to inform you that my report was not entirely accurate."

Hammond turned on him with a half-smile of triumph. "You didn't detonate the bomb."

O'Neill shook his head, "Oh, I did detonate the bomb, sir. It was aboard Ra's spacecraft, so it did kill him and eliminate the risk to Earth."

"However...?" Samuels prompted.

"However, Ra's ship was in orbit above the planet at the time. Neither the Gate nor anything else on the planet was destroyed. Daniel Jackson is alive and living with the people on Abydos."

Hammond could feel another chunk of his destiny falling into place, but he was surprised at the very real surge of anger that accompanied it. They could tell him about Apollo 13, but not that he would lose four members of his command right here on his own base? He demanded, "You violated direct orders! Why?"

O'Neill argued, "Because the people of Abydos are no threat to us. They deserve to be left alone."

Hammond told him, "That's not up to you."

#

Hammond poured a cup of coffee and sat back at his desk. At this hour of the morning, he could enjoy an uninterrupted hour or two to think before other demands were made on his time. Thousands of stargates, a galaxy spread out for them to explore-- and an implacable enemy. It was far more than he could ever have imagined in 1969. He wasn't all that surprised that O'Neill hadn't tried to explain, even if they hadn't been concerned about making changes. He wondered if he would have had the cojones to extend the deadline and let them them back through the stargate from Chulak if he hadn't had foreknowledge of the future.

He looked over the motley assortment of folders. Time to make a decision on permanent team assignments. He was almost sure that he'd go to bat for O'Neill's personnel selections, even if he hadn't had that peek into the future. Almost.

He looked at Samantha Carter's photograph in the corner of her file. Would he have recommended Jake Carter's daughter for this assignment if he hadn't already known she would get it? He looked at her record, her doctorate, the work she'd already done for the program. Yes, he thought he would.

He opened the next files. O'Neill, veteran of three missions now, highly decorated even if half his file was too classified for Hammond to read. Jackson, quickthinking enough to help O'Neill recover the bomb on the first mission, and resilient enough to make a place for himself on an alien world. Despite his complete lack of qualifications to be part of a military team, Hammond had a feeling that his cultural knowledge was going to be important. In his very first briefing, he'd called it right-- the Goa'uld pretended to be gods, and had been taking hosts throughout human history.

And Teal'c, the unknown quantity. O'Neill put a lot of faith in him. Samantha had argued in his favor. Even Jackson had expressed his willingness to work with him, displaying a pragmatism that boded well for his ability to adapt to the military environment. Hammond nodded decisively. It would take a lot of arguing with the Joint Chiefs, but he'd go to bat for Teal'c.

Hammond pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk and reached for the file at the very end. He drew out the sheet of yellow paper and reread it. "George- Help them." And the dates of the flares. He wondered if two would be enough. He hoped he wouldn't stubbornly refuse to believe in the note, despite it being in his handwriting. He didn't think he would. He knew that a lot of his crankiness the first time had been the concussion talking. He shut the file and tucked it away back into his drawer. There were still two more years to go.

#

Hammond took a deep breath and headed down to the control room. The great unknown future loomed up before him. Until now, he'd always had faith that SG-1 would return. They'd come back from Chulak. O'Neill had been cured of the nanite infection on Argos. Daniel hadn't really died on Oannes. O'Neill and Carter hadn't died in Antartica. They'd survived the alien attack on Earth, and so had Earth and the SGC. They'd all escaped from Hadante. He was almost sorry that the time had finally come. Until now he'd always been able to tell himself they had to be back. They had a date with the past coming up in October 1999. From this day on, there would be no more certainty.

He'd been tense all month, but he'd realized that this would be the mission when he'd seen Carter come back with that cut on her hand earlier in the week. He'd considered putting them on stand down until it healed, but that was silly. And then he'd risk some other team running into the flare and being sent back in time. If anyone could find their way out of this without causing damage to the timeline, it would be SG-1.

He moved down to where the captain was talking to the technician at the controls. "Sir?" she asked, looking surprised.

"How's the hand?" Hammond gently took her hand and inspected her stitches. They looked just as he remembered them.

Carter said, "It's a little sore, but it'll be all right. Thank you."

"Chevron one, encoded," the technician announced.

Hammond brought out the small creased yellow paper. Such a small thing to save their lives. He hoped it would be enough. "I'd like you to take this note along with you. Keep it in your vest pocket until you get on the other side." He handed it to her. "It's fairly self-explanatory."

"Chevron two, encoded."

Carter took it, looking confused, "Sir, is everything all right?"

Hammond looked at Jake's daughter and said, "Everything's fine."

"Chevron three, encoded."

"Time to ship out, Captain," Hammond prompted.

Carter put the note in her vest pocket as he'd instructed. "Yes, sir."

"Chevron four, encoded."

He watched Carter rejoin her teammates as the remaining three chevrons flashed and the gate connected. Hammond was a little disappointed to see it look like a perfectly normal wormhole. Samantha Carter glanced back up at him standing at the window. Hammond prayed fervently that this would not be the last time he saw her, and SG-1 walked up the ramp, stepped into the wormhole and disappeared.

As the wormhole dissipated, Hammond was struck with a pecular sense of deja-vu. He shook it off with an effort. It was only to be expected that he'd feel a little strange. How many times had he imagined this day? How many times had he wondered about the wording of the note, whether he should change something? Eventually, he'd gone with the exact wording of the note he'd taken from Samantha's equipment vest thirty years ago in Cheyenne Mountain.

#

Sam shivered convulsively, struck by a sudden piercing sense of deja-vu. Which made no sense whatsoever. Why should she have suddenly had the feeling that she was sitting beside a campfire, with Daniel saying something about Nixon? The last campfire she'd seen had been on a mission last week. Maybe she had dozed off and dreamed.

She looked around. The multicolored bus was travelling east through the soft summer night toward Amarillo. Michael and Jenny were slumped on a seat asleep, their arms around one another. Teal'c was performing kel'no'reem in the back. Colonel O'Neill had taken over driving from Michael, and Daniel was riding shotgun.

She wondered if they were doing the right thing, going to New York. General Hammond must have known something, to have given them that note. But what could it mean? She closed her eyes and visualized the equations that described the behavior of the wormhole. She could figure this out. If she couldn't, the General would have simply told her the answer.

#

Hammond walked down the stairs to the gate room hurriedly at the sound of the alarm. This time, perhaps it would be SG-1. SG-2 were the only other team offworld, and they were on a follow-up mission to a peaceful world. Please let it be SG-1. He'd endured three weeks of desperate worry. He'd been able to justify his lack of action to the Joint Chiefs, but he'd never dreamed they'd be gone so long. But this time his patience was rewarded.

"It's SG-1," the technician sounded startled.

Hammond ordered, "Open the iris." He walked down to the gate room to greet them as the iris opened. He was holding his breath as they stepped through-- two and two, four.

O'Neill threw up his arms in a victory wave when he saw they were home, "Yes!" He saluted Hammond sloppily. "We're home."

Behind them, the wormhole shut off.

"...thanks to one sparky young Lieutenant Hammond."

"How did you know, sir?" Sam asked him.

George was too relieved even to smile. He looked at the sixties clothes, the apparent lack of injuries. "When I was a young lieutenant, I was ordered to escort four people out of Cheyenne Mountain. In the vest pocket of one I found a note with my name on it. Needless to say, I followed its instructions." Hammond didn't think they needed to know about all the soul-searching he'd done over the years.

"But you couldn't have known when to give it to me," Carter protested.

"No, not until I saw the cut on your hand. Remember when I took your cuffs off." Hammond felt another of those odd flickers of dŽjˆ vu, like a half-remembered dream. A pale hand curled-- he shook it off.

Carter was surprised, "Then you've been waiting for this to happen."

"Ever since we met." He wondered if she remembered meeting him that day. "I almost didn't let you go."

"But if you didn't, you would have changed your own history," Carter said.

"It's going to be a *long* debriefing, people. We'll start in one hour." Hammond said.

"Yes, sir," O'Neill replied.

Hammond couldn't resist adding, "Oh, by the way, Colonel... with interest, you owe me five hundred thirty-nine dollars and fifty cents."

Carter and Daniel looked amused and O'Neill smiled, "Yes, sir."

Hammond smiled. Thirty years. The future was a frightening blank to him now, but at least he had SG-1 still around to deal with it. The future had just better watch out.

#

Sam was grateful that the debriefing hadn't been as long as Hammond had implied. He'd confirmed that he'd requested the time travel research. They had briefly outlined their adventures in 1969. Daniel had resolutely refused to reprise the German accent he'd used in the interview with Catherine Langford, despite prodding by the colonel.

Sam looked across at Daniel, pleased to see a reflection of her own puzzlement in his eyes. "Are you wondering what I'm wondering?" she asked.

"What?" O'Neill demanded.

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Daniel asked.

"Exactly." Sam said.

"What?!' O'Neill repeated.

Sam turned toward O'Neill. "Well sir, General Hammond wrote himself a note, because he received a note. But who wrote the note first?"

O'Neill gave her a wary look, like he was expecting a trick question. "Well, General Hammond."

"But it's an endless loop, sir. It had to have started somewhere."

"So originally, there was a set of events that led to General Hammond deciding to write a note," Daniel summarized. "The act of writing a note wiped out the events that led up to the writing of the note, but fortunately, it was self-sustaining, so the note became its own cause."

"Right!" Sam smiled at her fellow scientist. She should remember to be thankful more often for Daniel. After decades of always feeling like other people were dipped in treacle, it was such a delight to work with someone who thought as fast or faster than she did. She suppressed a giggle. And he sounded perfectly ridiculous talking with a German accent. She wondered if a beer or two would be enough to get him to demonstrate it again. The colonel would love it.

"So how do we know what happened the first time?" O'Neill asked in a pained tone of voice.

"We can't," Sam told her CO. "Those events don't exist anymore."

There was a brief silence, while the four men tried to wrap their brains around the concept. Teal'c spoke. "Is this not irrelevant? Since the events did not happen, why should we seek to know them?"

O'Neill said, "Ack," and made warding-off motions with his hands.

Daniel gave Teal'c a uncomprehending look. "Well, it's fascinating."

Sam looked at the General. He was staring at her with a half-puzzled, half-disturbed expression. When he saw her noticing his gaze, he glanced around the room. "I think that as the results of your mission have been so benign, we should count our blessings, and go on from there."

Sam heard him say something to O'Neill about being a month behind on his paperwork, while Daniel tried to explain counting blessings to Teal'c. She looked with deep satisfaction at the familiar trappings of the SGC about her. It certainly beat trying to live out their lives in obscurity in mid-twentieth-century America. As the colonel would say, 'there's no place like home'.


End file.
